After saving a few people, Kirito is invited into their guild and he agrees to join. Their guild is slowly gaining levels and money.

On a night stroll, Kirito meets up with Klein again. But he says nothing.

The female guild member Sachi is afraid of dying. Kirito says he will protect her.

The guild decide to gather some money with a dungeon run. A member triggers a trap and spawns hundreds of monsters with no escape. The members all die apart from Kirito who is much higher level but hid that from them.

Time skips to Christmas Eve, 49th floor. Kirito is alone again, he finds out about an event with a boss ‘Nicholas the Renegade’. All the big guilds are searching for him as it’s rumoured that he drops an item to revive the dead. Kirito plans to solo it.

Klein follows him there and asks he joins their group. Kirito refuses but their conversation is cut short as Klein was followed by the Holy Dragon Alliance. Klein decides to hold them off and let Kirito off alone.

Kirito wins but finds that the item can only be used within 10 seconds of someone dying. He gives it to Klein and leaves.

At ‘home’ he receives a recording from Sachi telling him not to blame himself for her death, and to live on.

Thoughts:

Floor 49 already? That’s pretty quick, 3 episodes down and nearly half the floors cleared. I wasn’t paying attention to the anime time, so I guess a long time had passed in the anime, but episode and screen time wise, it was fast. I’m assuming the main story happens on a certain few floors as it would be unlikely to have a story for a lot of floors. But even still, after making such a big deal of how hard it was to even get past something like 10 floors, you’d think they’d at least try to make it sound more difficult. Suddenly it looks like the game’s easily doable and I’m sure it’s not that simple. Hopefully difficulty will spike up soon, wouldn’t be a game if it didn’t. Would love to see last floor boss.

It’s still managed to ‘keep it real’. People still talking about it as being a game. I think whoever makes it out of this alive will be traumatised never to go on another MMO again, at least not another VRMMORPG. Unless this had the opposite effect and gave them a massive confidence boost for any game.

I wonder why some people are trying to race for the top in this life or death situation. Why not just level up ‘normally’ and wait for the ‘best’ to clear the levels whilst you try and have some fun. No matter what, it’s still a game in the end. I think I’d be able to enjoy it even knowing I could die at any moment. Worrying too much will get you no where.

I’m rather surprised that there wasn’t a way for others to know your level. I didn’t think that was a standard in MMOs. I don’t know any MMOs where I can’t see my friend’s levels somehow. I mean in some MMOs where you can’t see another’s level you can usually tell by the gears they’re wearing. Usually gears are level specific and if you’ve played long enough you’ll recognise it instantly. I’d have thought they should at least be able to tell from the weapon he uses. Though that said, he did switch weapons when facing that weird Santa, so perhaps he used a lower level weapon to ‘mix’ in? Even so, why? I thought he was a lone player, what would prompt him to join a guild? What would make him slow his levelling down to half his level? Did he get lonely?

From what I understand this episode showed a ‘flashback’ or a side story if you will. This was written after the main story but the anime wanted everything to be in chronological order. Which means a few things I think, firstly that we won’t be seeing the main story for a bit, secondly maybe some of the things won’t tie up properly and thirdly these stories will probably explain why he’s a lone player in the main story. Like this episode showing him losing some friends. Sounds like the typical ‘everyone close to me dies, so don’t like to get close’. So yeah, probably going through the foundations of why he’s a solo player and what he’s fighting for etc. So he can be ‘at the top of his game’ as the black swordsman for the real story.

Note: I apologise for a lack of blogs the past week, I’ve been out every day apart from Thursday. I haven’t had the opportunity to watch anything until today, so I’ll resume normal blogs now.

Indeed, I want to see Asuna too, her being the main heroine and whatnot makes you wonder why she’s only appeared in one episode.

I believe that they skipped a lot time wise in the novels as well as the main events happened over a few years, but I don’t know, seems like we’re missing out on a lot even thought I know we’re not missing any of the main story.

I was a bit taken aback by how much time has passed. According to the time markings, they were first trapped in the game mid-December, 2022. Then the end of this episode took place Christmas Eve, 2023. So they’ve been stuck in that game for slightly over a *year* now. That’s a long time.

Hopefully they’ll eventually get to whatever the folks back home have been doing to save all the kids who have been stuck in the game over the course of that year…^_^”

That is indeed a long time, you’d think the authorities would’ve been able to do something by now. And also you’d think that from the thousands of people at least a few must’ve died from malnutrition or something. Even if you were stuck on a drip in the real world you’d still be wasting away. Yeah, love to see how they’re gonna explain that…

I know they can survive on a drip. My point is that they’re just there in a coma with their body wasting away. Sure it’s not going to hurt them mentally, not whilst in game at least, but it’s gonna be quite a problem when they get out. With no medical knowledge I’m still pretty sure a drip is not the same as eating solid food everyday. And no matter how you look at it, it would still be good if they at least said something, which is why I said some could’ve died from malnutrition as you don’t know how they’re being kept alive.

True that medicine might’ve advanced to a point when they can still keep people’s physical condition intact even on a drip, but my main point is that it would be good for them to give us a hint of what they’re doing in the real world. I did say I don’t want the entire story in the game world, I don’t believe that to be the case but it’s not doing anything to disprove that.

Oh well, I’m rather looking forward to how the story ‘solves’ this problem.

I have a feeling that there maybe an episode featurin his sister in the Real World. However, I have a feeling of doubt that it would be a sobbin, talking to herself episode with no real development of the story.